The Duke's Marriage Mission

by Deborah Hale

  The pain in the duke’s voice was so raw, it seared away all the resentment Leah harbored toward him, leaving only ashes of pity. Was it any wonder he clung so tightly to the child he had come so close to losing?

  “Heavenly Father,” the duke continued, “grant me the strength and patience to do my best for Kit, to keep him safe, healthy and happy.”

  Leah began to back away. She should not be here, eavesdropping on the most intimate communication between a man and his Maker.

  In spite of her good intentions, the duke’s next words stopped her in her tracks. “Help me have patience with Kit’s new governess, Lord. I fear she is right that I should have found someone to teach him long before this. I know she thinks I am an unfeeling tyrant, but please do not let her turn my son against me.”

  His words hit Leah like the stinging stroke of a switch across her palm. Before she had time to remember where they were, a fierce denial burst from her lips. “I am not trying to turn Kit against you! I would never do anything so wicked! It is you who are blighting his affection for you.”

  Her outburst spun the duke around and brought him to his feet. “What are you doing here, woman? What right have you to spy upon a man at prayer?”

  That was a charge against which Leah could not defend herself. Her conscience reproached her every bit as indignantly as His Grace did. Part of her wanted to turn and flee, but that had never been her way. Now that she had glimpsed what lay behind the duke’s hostility toward her, she could not permit it to go unchallenged... no matter what the consequences.

  Was it not enough that Leah Shaw had made his son view him as some kind of ogre? Now the woman had stolen into his private chapel to eavesdrop on his prayers!

  Never in his life had Hayden felt so dangerously exposed.

  Like a lion tormented by a thorn in its paw, he reared up roaring accusations, desperate to frighten her away and perhaps make her forget what she had overheard. Any of his servants would have turned tail at once and not stopped running until they reached the village.

  Miss Shaw flinched from his outburst, but held her ground until he paused for breath. Then, instead of bolting back to her room and barricading the door, she thrust out her chin and stepped up to confront him. “I did not mean to spy on you, sir. I came here to pray as well. I had no idea anyone would be here until you spoke. I was going to go away quietly until I heard you say I was turning Kit against you. I could not let you go on believing anything so ridiculous.”

  Hayden seized upon the word. “Ridiculous am I? Perhaps I seem that way to one who makes a jest of everything. You may be able to make light of my son’s condition and the measures I take to protect him, but I cannot.”

  As he spoke, Hayden scuttled sideways toward the center aisle where he would not be hemmed in by the pews. Miss Shaw continued to approach until they were nearly toe to toe.

  “I do not take your son’s condition lightly,” she stared up at him defiantly. “I try to make light of it so he will not feel sorry for himself or use it as an excuse to do less than his best. Fortunately Kit does not seem inclined to do either. He is a fine boy. In a great many ways you have done an admirable job of raising him.”

  She spoke in such a rebellious tone it was difficult for Hayden to recognize the praise her words contained. “I... have? Admirable?”

  Leah Shaw gave an emphatic nod that made her dark curls dance around her face. “Very admirable. Even if you were not, I would never seek to turn a child against a parent. I beg you to put that thought out of your mind at once.”

  Hayden wanted to believe her. When she turned those wide hazel eyes upon him, it was difficult to resist her entreaty. But there were facts he could not altogether dismiss. “Before you came here, my son never spoke to me the way he has of late. We were perfectly content.”

  “You might have been, but was he?” Though her tone and stance betrayed no hostility, her words challenged Hayden nonetheless. “Kit is no longer an infant and I am not convinced his health is as fragile as you believe. I suspect he would soon have begun to crave more freedom. My coming only set the spark to some very dry tinder.”

  “That is not true!” Hayden spoke louder than he’d intended, perhaps to drown out the insidious whispers of doubt in his mind. “You set him a bad example by making me the butt of your jests, laughing off everything I say as if it is contemptible.”

  At last something he said seemed to make a serious impression upon this infuriatingly lighthearted woman.

  “Is that how it appeared to you?” She took a few unsteady steps and sank down onto the nearest pew. “Believe me, Your Grace, I never intended to mock you in front of your son.”

  She sounded sincere, but Hayden had suffered too many pin pricks from her rapier wit to be easily persuaded. “Then why did you make me the butt of your fun?”

  Kit’s governess hoisted her shoulders. “That is what I have always done when I feel oppressed.”

  Something about the way she spoke suggested it had been a frequent occurrence in her life. That thought made Hayden feel strangely protective toward her, something he had not felt for anyone but his son in a very long time. Suddenly his grievances against her no longer seemed to matter so much.

  With a flick of his hand he signaled her to budge over in the pew. Then he slid in beside her. “Is that why you only take governess positions for one year, because you have been mistreated by your employers in the past and fear it will happen again?”

  She clearly considered him another such tyrant. Hard as Hayden tried to dismiss that possibility, when he looked back on his actions, he could not.

  “My past employers have allowed me considerable latitude.” Miss Shaw answered his question without telling him what he wanted to know. “I had no quarrel with any of them.”

  “If not them, who was it that oppressed you?” Hayden persisted even though he could tell it was not a subject she cared to discuss.

  “What possible bearing can that have on our present situation?” She wrapped her arms around herself as if to ward off a chill, though the summer evening did not merit it.

  “I suspect it may have a considerable bearing upon our... difficulties.”

  Miss Shaw defied him with silence until he was almost prepared to abandon his questioning. Then, in a convulsive movement, she wrenched her arms from around her torso and raised her hands so he could not avoid looking at them. “If you must know, I rebelled against my teachers at the charity school where I was sent. Jests were a little safer than outright defiance. But not entirely.”

  Hayden looked closer at her palms and saw they were crisscrossed with fine lines, paler than the surrounding flesh. Scars like that must have taken a good many thrashings to form. The thought sickened him with outrage.

  Before he could respond, Leah Shaw whipped her hands out of his sight and shot to her feet. “Perhaps now you will understand why I cannot abide anything that smacks of repression.”

  She turned away from him and sought to exit the narrow pew at the other end.

  Hayden scrambled up and flew to intercept her. He reached the chapel door ahead of her, blocking her escape. But when he glimpsed the defiant look in her eyes he sensed it would be a terrible mistake to detain her that way. An appeal might work better.

  He stepped aside, allowing her free access to the door should she wish to leave. “Please stay, Miss Shaw. We have too little opportunity to talk without my son present. I should be sorry to lose this chance while he is asleep.”

  Leah Shaw cast a longing glance toward the door but held her ground. “Whose fault is it that Kit must witness all our conversations? That is another reason I have tried to make light of all your fault-finding during our lessons. I did not want to trouble him with the hostility between us. However much you detest me, I must ask that you treat me with respect in front of him.”

  “I do not detest you!” Hayden protested even as his conscience questioned how she could be expected to know that.

  “Indeed?” She cros
sed her arms in front of her chest and gave an exaggerated scowl. Hayden feared it was an all-too-accurate imitation of how he had looked this week during Kit’s lessons. “If we are quibbling over a choice of words, how would you describe your attitude toward me? Contempt? Loathing?”

  An unexpected hint of vulnerability behind her challenge forced Hayden to confess the truth. “Threatened.”

  The instant that word left his mouth he wished he could take it back. But Miss Shaw’s bewildered silence urged him to explain himself. “I am afraid Kit will prefer your company to mine. Your way of teaching makes lessons more diverting than play.”

  “Do you mean that?” His grudging admission seemed to moderate the worst of her defensiveness. “You interrupted so often, I was certain you must disapprove of my methods.”

  “Quite the contrary,” he muttered, driven to confess by a growing sense of shame. “I interrupted because I was drawn into your lessons. None of my tutors ever engaged my interest in learning the way you have Kit’s... and mine.”

  For the first time that evening Miss Shaw’s lips broke into one of her infectious grins. “Neither did any of my teachers. That is why I am so determined to take a different approach.”

  Hayden began to understand her mysterious motives at last. “So every day you teach is an act of rebellion against them?”

  A mischievous spark kindled in her eyes. “You are a dangerously perceptive man, Your Grace.”

  Others might wonder how perception could be considered dangerous, but Hayden thought he knew. There was something else he now understood, as well. Leah Shaw did not mean to defy him but rather those grim teachers who had tried to make her youth a misery. But she had refused to let them. Her humor and high spirits had been a means of rebellion.

  Who could not admire that kind of courage? Hayden found it impossible.

  “This conversation has been most enlightening, though I am not certain a chapel is the best place for it.” The duke motioned toward the door. “May we continue out in the cloisters?”

  Leah thought for a moment then nodded. Knowing the duke felt threatened by her connection with his son shed an entirely different light upon his recent actions. No parent would want to lose their child’s affections to a newcomer. She regretted giving Lord Northam cause to fear that might happen, and even more to think she meant to ridicule him in Kit’s eyes.

  His Grace pulled open the chapel door and motioned her into the cloisters. This would be a better place for them to converse, Leah realized. Not squared off opposite one another, fixed in their positions, but moving forward side by side.

  She had only taken a slow step or two when the duke caught up with her.

  “I hope you know I would never harm anyone the way you were.” He sounded as if he expected her to doubt him.

  “Of course, I know it.” She answered more sharply than she meant to.

  What had compelled her to show him her scarred palms and tell him how she had come by those scars? She was not at all comfortable having him see a side of her that she had hidden for so many years behind a protective mask of vivacity and rebellious high jinks. But since he knew, should she risk disclosing more about her past if it might benefit his son?

  “The punishments I received were not the worst thing about the Pendergast School, you know.”

  “There was worse?” The duke sounded outraged on her behalf, as if he longed to confront anyone who had ever wronged her and bring them to account.

  That notion stirred something in Leah. “Not worse in the way you may think. But I would have happily borne a thrashing every day of my school career if only I had been allowed more freedom to do what I wanted rather than what I was compelled to do.”

  Their footsteps made a steady, soothing murmur on well-worn stones. The duke’s silence made Leah wonder if he could comprehend her feelings any better than the holy brothers who had once tread these cloisters.

  Upon entering the order, those men would have surrendered their freedom to own personal possessions and act contrary to the instructions of their superiors. They would have given up even the basic freedom to love. Had it been a constant sacrifice for them to live according to those vows? Or had they found peace and fulfillment in subduing their individual wishes so completely to the will of God?

  That thought troubled Leah. Did it make her any less a child of God because she treasured the freedom she had always considered one of her Creator’s greatest gifts?

  “So you think I am a tyrant like your teachers,” the duke sounded more grieved than angry, “because I will not allow Kit to do whatever he likes in spite of the consequences he is too young to appreciate?”

  “Of course not.” Leah’s hand tingled with the urge to clasp his and give it a reassuring squeeze. But that was a liberty she did not dare take. Her association with the duke had barely begun to thaw. The last thing she wanted was to give him cause to take offense. “I believe you are an excellent father in a great many ways. It is obvious you care deeply about Kit and would do anything in your power to protect him and make him happy.”

  “Of course I would,” His Grace replied without an instant’s hesitation. “My responsibility for my son is one from which I would never want to be free. It is not a burden but an anchor—a fixed, lasting connection I cherish above all else. Without it I might be free, but that would mean nothing for my life would be empty.”

  When he put it that way, the duke’s argument was most persuasive, Leah had to admit. But how could two people with such contrary beliefs both be right?

  Perhaps the key to working together for Kit’s welfare lay in concentrating on their areas of common ground, however small. “The Lilliputian figures you had made for Kit are the most splendid playthings I have ever seen. How did you think of them?”

  “I hardly remember now.” Her praise seemed to catch the duke off guard, though Leah sensed it pleased him. “Kit loved the book and talked of how he wished he could visit Lilliput. Then it occurred to me that I might be able to bring Lilliput to him.”

  By now, in spite of their leisurely pace, they had reached the archway where the cloisters joined the house. Leah stifled a foolish pang of disappointment that their stroll and conversation must come to an end.

  Then, without seeming to be aware of what he was doing, the duke turned and started back the way they had come. “You make excellent use of those little figures and the book to teach him, Miss Shaw. I never thought I would live to hear a child demanding more lessons.”

  Now it was Leah’s turn to be gratified, nearly to the point of embarrassment. “Learning can be a joy and it should be. Whatever ails your son’s legs there is nothing wrong with his mind. A proper education can bring the rest of the world to him, the way your little figures brought him the land of Lilliput.”

  The duke gave a slow, pensive nod. “I had not thought of it like that. I suppose if Kit wants more study time, it would do no harm to extend his lessons a little.”

  That was a start. Leah allowed herself a tiny smile, but turned her face away from Lord Northam so he would not think she was gloating.

  His concession emboldened her to try for more. “I am not certain he needs quite so much rest time. He seems to find it passes slowly with nothing to do. Perhaps we could use some of it for lessons instead.”

  “He has complained about his rest time.” The duke’s gaze strayed toward the grounds of Renforth Abbey that lay beyond the cloister windows. “But I need those free hours to attend to estate business. My steward already finds that time is not enough to get through all the matters we need to discuss.”

  How could she phrase her request in a way that would not offend the duke? “I am not suggesting you take time away from your duties, sir. Could you not trust me to teach Kit without your oversight?”

  “It is not a matter of trust,” the duke insisted until she shot him a dubious look, softened with a smile. “Very well, perhaps it is, a little.”

  Leah sensed his reluctance. It was a stout bar
rier. And yet, the duke’s love for his son was a powerful force. “Believe me, sir. Kit’s affection for you will not be diminished by a little time spent apart. Indeed, I believe he might enjoy your company more if he did not have it in such abundance.”

  “Is that a polite way of saying you want me to push off during Kit’s lessons and allow you to do your job without having your every move scrutinized and every other sentence interrupted?” Lord Northam glanced toward her, his handsome features set in a dark scowl.

  But was that a silvery twinkle she glimpsed in his blue eyes? And did one corner of his frowning mouth twitch as if barely restrained from curling upward?

  Those subtle signs of amusement provoked her to risk a blunt reply. “Yes, Your Grace, that is exactly what I am trying to say.”

  She sought to soften the sting her words might inflict with a teasing tone. “I reckon it would do both you and your son good to spend more time apart. What is it that prevents you, besides mistrust of me?”

  The duke pondered her question. Though she found it difficult to keep silent, Leah did not pester him for an immediate answer.

  After a moment His Grace halted and turned toward her. “The night Kit was born, I prayed as I have never prayed before or since. I implored God with all my heart and soul to let my son live.”

  With the fresh memory of what she had overheard in the chapel, Leah could picture that desperate paternal plea.

  “He was such a fragile little scrap.” Lord Northam continued, “I vowed I would care for him and do everything in my power to keep him from harm. But I had no idea how all-consuming it could be to tend an infant. I began letting the nursemaids take more and more responsibility for him. When the problem with his legs was discovered, I knew I had let my son down.”

  “It is not your fault Kit cannot walk. The stiffness in his legs was not a judgment on you for letting a nursemaid change his linen now and then.” It was a feeble jest, but Leah hoped it might help the duke see how foolish it was to blame himself for his son’s condition. “Mr. Gibson told me Kit suffered a difficult birth. The trouble with his legs must have been there all along, only no one noticed until he was old enough to begin walking.”